Rise of the silver surfers: More seniors online, but barriers to culture persist

Like many young Canadians, Denis O’Keefe is rarely more than an arm’s length away from an Internet-connected device. He goes online throughout the day, routinely checks his email, watches videos on YouTube, reads newspapers’ RSS feeds and occasionally posts to Facebook.

The difference is that O’Keefe is 96 years old.

The Edmonton man is among the nation’s growing cohort of silver surfers, whom Statistics Canada says is helping close the generation gap in online engagement. A new report by the agency notes that in 2000, less than 10 per cent of seniors had been online in the month prior to being surveyed, whereas by 2010, fully 60 per cent of Canadians 65 to 74, and 29 per cent of those 75 and older, had done so.

The bad news is that seniors’ online cultural consumption – think digital downloads of music, TV and movies – is dismally lagging. And as more and more services go digital, the risk of alienation is significant.

“Ifthe primary route for culture consumption changes, but not everybody is accessing it that way, you have an issue,” said Mary Allen, senior analyst with StatsCan. “We need to make sure that nobody gets left out.”

Although consumers 45 and older have long represented the largest share of music buyers, participation drops considerably with digital. In 2010, 87 per cent of young Canadians (15 to 24) listened to downloaded music at least once a week, compared to just 10 per cent of older Canadians (65 to 74).

Importantly, seniors reported listening to the same amount of music as they did in the late 1990s; they were just doing so using older formats. More than 80 per cent exclusively relied on such traditional mediums as CDs, versus six per cent of young Canadians.

Digital media expert Alfred Hermida says people simply prefer to use the media they grew up with. With the advent of tablets, however, he believes online culture will become more accessible.

“You click one button and you get your books. Click another button and you get your music. You don’t worry about how to do it; you just do it,” said Hermida, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the forthcoming book Tell Everyone.

But there remain barriers.

Hermida notes, for example, that the majority of cultural material online right now is very youth-driven and inattentive to older audiences. StatsCan found that only 10 per cent of seniors were using the Internet in 2010 to watch videos or movies.

Catherine Middleton, who has studied Internet-use patterns, sees it as a challenge to entice seniors to subvert their routines.

She remarks that e-books, for example, are perfectly suited to older readers who lack mobility or require larger font sizes. And the market is undeniable: Seniors age 65 to 74 were 1.4 times more likely than the average Canadian to read at least one book a month in 2010.

“Baby boomers will be far more comfortable online (than the current generation),” said Middleton, a Canada Research Chair at Ryerson University. “But I also think that as you get older, there’s a certain point where you don’t want to fuss around with these things anymore. . . . It’s a real opportunity for businesses to make things simpler, which will benefit everybody.”

The nonagenarian’s purchase of a Notebook, for instance, proved futile when the seven-inch device wasn’t compatible with his arthritic hands. And his recent laptop upgrade to Windows 8 has so far proven more frustrating than helpful – though that issue is hardly limited to seniors.

“I’ll be in the middle of typing something – and God knows it’s difficult to type with two fingers – and it will go back to the Start page for no reason at all,” said O’Keefe. “It’s diabolical.”

Misty Harris is a nationally recognized journalist known for her stories on social science, consumer trends, demographics, academic studies, and marketing. For more than a decade, her articles have been... read more featured on the front pages of Canada’s top newspapers, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, Montreal Gazette, The Province, The Leader-Post, The Star-Phoenix, The Windsor Star, and Ottawa Citizen, in addition to such online news hubs as Canada.com.
Harris has been honoured by the Society for Features Journalism; appeared as a pop culture commentator on CTV, Global News and BBC World Service; reported on fashion, health and lifestyle issues for Flare magazine; and spoken as a guest lecturer at universities in Canada and the U.S.
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